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dessert

I saw the Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Limited Edition Collection last week at the Suria KLCC shop in Malaysia. I was quite intrigued and thought it would make a lovely gift for my girlfriend. There’s a box that cost RM 463 (I think) and I figured it’ll be worth it since it’s premium chocolate mooncakes and you only get it once a year.

This is the poster I saw – Full Moon Indulgence.

However, when I came back just 24 hours later, the box set was sold out! This really is a limited edition run. There’s a RM 249 box set but I didn’t quite like that since it has the regular GODIVA range of chocolates inside.

Thus, I bought the GODIVA 2013 Mid-Autumn Festival Limited Edition box that was in the poster – it’s RM 159 for one large chocolate mooncake and 8 mini chocolate mooncakes.

There are two types of large chocolate mooncakes – this Belgium purveyor of fine chocolates produced a dark chocolate version and a milk chocolate version. The RM 159 box only has the dark chocolate version but there are 8 mini-mooncakes called Pepite Mooncake Chocolates that gives you a taste of the entire range of the Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Festival collection!

The 3 different flavored chocolate mooncakes are:

White Chocolate Mooncake: Strawberry-Pomegranate Crunchy

This is a white chocolate mooncake with a filling of crispy strawberry crunch and pomegranate chocolate ganache. I liked this one the most – the white chocolate exterior tastes sweet and the strawberries inside has bits of fruit still on it!

Milk Chocolate Mooncake: Apricot-Peach Crunchy

The milk chocolate exterior is made with Ghana milk cocoa, Turkish hazelnut and Louisiana walnut. The two different nuts makes up the two layers inside the chocolate mooncake and the two different fruits makes it taste like a nectarine dipped chocolate.

Dark Chocolate Mooncake: Mango-Passion Fruit Crunch

This is 64% Peruvian dark chocolate as the exterior with soy beans in Hawaiian almond paste and caramel hazelnut to balance the bitter dark chocolate. I like the mango and passion fruit inside too! This is also available in the large size that we’re going to eat tonight!

I think you can buy the large chocolate mooncakes individually for about RM 80 (calculating back from the box price) but I got the 9 piece Mid-Autumn Gift Box since I wanted to try all three flavors and the large mooncakes are only available in dark and milk chocolate.

It’s the most expensive mooncake I’ve ever bought but I think it’s also the most unique one! We’ve had the Pepite Mooncake Chocolates (one of each flavor) and we’re saving the big one for tonight. The 9-piece Godiva 2013 Mid-Autumn Festival Collection has one large dark chocolate mooncake and 8 pepeite mooncake chocolates (2 of white chocolate, 3 each of white and dark chocolate).

This is one of the most awesome chocolates I’ve ever had – it’s made of over 80% cocoa, very dark and bittersweet, with a dusting to finish it.

I think a whole bunch of us in Singapore had way too much of these. I know I certainly did, totally ruined my appetite for dinner.

This is pretty good too – it’s a layered chocolate cake and almost impossible to dissect but let me attempt to describe it – it contains layer after layer of moist and fluffy pastry covered with chocolate. I was impressed, it was so light it felt like I was eating mostly air.

Lobster shooters. I liked this one too – awesomely concocted pieces of lobsters with the accompanying sauces and garnishes in one ready-to-drink (eat?) shot.

This were the chocolates that had liquor in it – it’s infused with Bailey’s Irish Cream. I preferred the original high cocoa content chocolate cubes instead but a lot of others liked these. :)

Picture this. We just arrived in Penang and naturally, one of the things you get in Penang is Tau Sar Pneah (red bean baked pastries). I have no idea why it’s spelled pneah, I would have gone with the shorter phonetic pia. Anyway, that is not the point of this.

We followed the GPS to Ghee Hiang but when it cheerfully announced that we have arrived at our destination, all we saw was a brick building – with no entrance that the naked eye can see.

There were a couple of tour buses there though, so I thought we were in the right place. After parking, we realized that we have arrived at the factory itself. We walked in through the back of Ghee Hiang and thus caught a glimpse of how they make tau sar pneah:

Ghee Hiang Tau Sar Pneah has only one small facade for doing commerce – the majority of the floor space is dedicated to actually making the pastries. I thought it was funny though, us waltzing in through the back door for employees and plodding the entire length of the considerable factory to the front to buy the acclaimed Penang delights. :)

My girlfriend bought a lot of Kiwi fruit weeks ago – there were 8 of these French green kiwifruits and she’s eaten only one during all that time. I’m not a fan of fruits in general so it remained uneaten for several days.

I noticed the furry little things in the fridge during the weekend and thought it’ll be a waste to let it rot. I decided to remedy that by cooking something that sounded good – Kiwi fruit rice! :)

Yes, this is another variant of my preserved meat meals. Heh! However, I decided on going for presentation this time – I’ll make a smiley face out of this sweet and savory meal!

I’ll like to call this Drooling Smiley Face Kiwi Fruit Rice with Fish Roe and Pork. I’ll explain the “drooling” part later. :)

I used 3 kiwi fruits and sliced it into circles.

That was a mistake. I should have peeled it before doing so coz it became rather hard to remove the skin after slicing.

Told you I wasn’t good with fruits. >.<

Anyway, I mixed 2 cups of rice with 3 kiwi fruits, one lonely fish roe and a piece of waxed meat before turning the rice cooker on.

That’s the beauty of this – there’s no additional cooking needed, everything is done by the rice cooker. :)

It was ready after 10 minutes. I originally made it to look sorta like a face but then I realized I could make it look MORE like a face by arranging the fish roe as the “nose” and the waxed meat as the “mouth”. That leaves the “eyes” – century eggs. :D

The finishing touch was some fresh yoghurt – this is the plain unflavored ones, don’t use the flavored ones, it’ll ruin the taste of the dish.

I dabbed a generous portion on the waxed meat “mouth” to look like it was drooling. Food is all about presentation as well. ;)

I took a tentative scoop of rice…

…and was amazed. The fruity citrus tang of the Kiwi combined with the sour yoghurt and rice tastes exceptionally delicious! It’s very refreshing! It’s tastes like…a beach holiday with the warm sun on your back and the cool breeze from the sea coming in.

It tasted like what an oasis would seem to someone wondering in a desert for 2 days without water.

The waxed meat and fish roe provides a savory twist to it. I ate one mouthful of the kiwi + yoghurt + rice and alternated it with waxed meat + fish roe + century egg + rice.

It’s like having a main and a dessert in one dish!

It is surprisingly good, I kid you not! Let your adventurous palate roam with this unique dish and check it out for yourself.

You can also forgo the meat and just cook Kiwi fruit rice and pair it with yoghurt for a dessert dish – I’m sure it’ll taste equally good. :)

Mango Mania Dessert Parlor and Beefy’s Steaks is a two-in-one eating establishment located at Jalan Telawi, Bangsar which is puzzlingly located beside a boutique as well. It’s Fresh’s birthday and she had dinner plans so we went for lunch instead. Yes, it’s the very same Fresh who was kind enough to act as videographer for 5 hours. =D

We were driving around Telawi and wanted to head to BVII when we spotted this nook in the cranny place. It seems to have been featured in a lot of publications before from the proud display of cuttings on its facade.

This place appears to have started out as Mango Mania – a dessert parlor, before diversifying into steaks. They have a couple of interesting things on the menu like Mango Burger which wasn’t available when we were there.

Fresh Mango Juice (RM 11.90) and Orange-A-Peel (RM 11.90). The former is pure mango juice with sugar added and it’s thick and good. The latter has mango plus a smorgasbord of citrus fruits which Fresh ordered.

Alright, now let’s get down with the Beefy’s Steaks bit!

Fresh ordered a salmon dish which according to my receipt is called OTHERS (RM 19). Ya ya, I’m sorry I forgot to take a photo of the menu of her order. It’s pretty good.

I on the other hand stayed true to ordering steaks to a place that’s called Beefy’s Steaks – Sirloin medium rare (RM 29) with shallot brown sauce, seasonal veggies and mashed potatoes.

Medium rare means medium rare over here – both the dishes tasted good but then again we were hungry so YMMV.

I have one beef (pun intended) about this place though – a bottle of Guinness FES costs RM 18 which is pub prices at a cafe environment. The bill came up to RM 115.10.

We still had space for dessert so I went for their flagship 98% fat free frozen yogurt. This is so good I would dub it orgasmic. I ordered the Mango Dress Me Up (RM 8.90) which is Yo Froz of your choice with fresh cut mango. It’s frozen mango yogurt…with fresh mango cubes!

Fresh went salmon again (swimming against the flow) and ordered the Mango Sago Pudding Ice (RM 10.90) which is a HUGE bowl of fresh mango, sago, mango pudding and ice in milk blended mango puree. It was alright, but…

I must admit though we kinda got nectarine overdose at the end.

P/S – What’s up with the RM XX.90 anyway? 10 cents from the next number.

The promegranate fruit, sometimes spelled as pomegranate, is a seed
based fruit that I’ve seen around in Australia and Malaysia, but never
got around to trying it, not being a big fan of fruits.

I got one of them to eat just now though – it retails for RM 3.59
per fruit and the promegranate fruit originates from India. It looks
rather like an onion with its bulbous shape and flared ends – a large,
reddish onion.

The pomegranate fruit is filled with red seed pulps in segments much
like the pomelo fruit. I was told that only the seeds are edible, and
not the skin.

Much like the pomelo fruit, the pitted areas around the skin and
segments tastes bitter, but the seeds have a slightly muted
tartness…muted being the keyword here. I found the fruit rather
bland, to be honest, and didn’t find eating it fresh particularly
interesting, though I imagine it would go well in other preparations.

Carmelle dessert with caramel sauce! I love these things! I was
surprised when I saw a box of Carmelle on the supermarket shelves. I
thought this wonderful product has been discontinued! It looked similar
to the ones that I remembered – it has the familiar green packaging and
the unmistakable upturned custard with caramel sauce picture on it. I
used to eat heaps of these when I was in primary school. They came in
individual serve packets then, about 10 to a pack, instead of one large
portion that it comes packaged in now. Otherwise, it all looks the
same, right down to the brand name. Sweet nostalgia! :)

This is what the Carmelle box contains – there’s a pack of custard
yellow powder and a sachet of thick caramel. It’s officially called a
vanilla flavored dessert mix with caramel topping, but it tastes like
custard with caramel topping. It’s ingenious really…the caramel is
sticky and thick and when the heated custard liquid is poured over it,
it slowly melts and becomes a topping, instead of mixing into the
liquid.

All it requires is some milk, and we’re good to go! It’s just like I remembered…

I made this with my girlfriend yesterday, before I came back. The
caramel sachet was squeezed into two bowls instead of one to make it
set faster.

The milk was brought to a boil…

and the custard sachet emptied into the boiling milk, taking care to stir semi-vigorously for about two minutes.

The boiling custard mix was then poured into the bowls (which already has the caramel in it) and left alone to cool.

Once an appropriate amount of time has passed (this can be done by
doing the “jiggle test” – basically, gently agitate the receptacle your
custard is in and watch the movements of the custard to infer the
solidity ;)), the bowl was overturned into a plate.

This is what Carmelle looks like – custard with a caramel topping. I
like to have it semi-solid, it goes down better than way. Carmelle is a
quick and easy dessert and it tastes great!

This afternoon was baking day at the sixthseal.com bakery. That, of
course, is just really my girlfriend’s kitchen – she has more baking
stuff than my kitchen does, coz my family doesn’t spend time doing
things like baking. We made a Devil’s food cake which I’ll like to call
The Devil’s Kiss. Yes, it was from a cake mix, but we customized it
(er…kinda), so there. :p

Recipe for The Devil’s Kiss:

One Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Devil’s Food cake mix

One pack of Hershey’s Kisses

One can of Dairy Whip whipped cream

One Dunhill Scotch Master “Finest Scotch Whisky”

and the things that the cake mix requires, which wasn’t much – 3
eggs, 1 1/3 cups of water, and 1/2 cup of vegetable oil. Nothing you
would be hard pressed to find in any kitchen (even mine).

We started out by pouring the cake mix into the mixing bowl and
adding in 1 1/3 cups of water. I don’t know the exact empirical figures
for “cups” so we didn’t bother with conversion to SI units like litres,
and just poured in (literally) one full cup and another filled a third
up.

Next, we added in the vegetable oil. I was a bit doubtful when I
read this…a recipe that calls for cooking oil instead of butter for
cake seems kinda dodgy. However, that’s what it says on the package, so
that’s what it’s going to be. My girlfriend handled the huge cooking
oil bottle while I took a photo – we did not bother with cups because
that would mean more things to wash up after we’re done. ;)

It should be noted that more than 1/2 cup of vegetable oil was
poured in…the oil container is as unwieldy as it looks, and while I
sat on the frontlines to monitor the pourage (meaning, I sat on my ass
while I watched her pouring it), too much oil got into the mix. I was
going like “yeah, that looks about right, you can stop now, thanks” and
my gf was still going at and I was like “OMG, stop!” and she was still
going at it and when I finally put the digicam down and took the
cooking oil bottle away from her (it’s dangerous in her hands), I
guesstimated that more than one cup of oil landed into the mix. Oh
well…

Anyway, three large eggs were cracked into the mix after that. It’s
noteworthy to say that all these preparations took a long time and we
did not follow the recipe religiously, and spent ample time doing other
stuff while the mix was lying there. I also added about 6 shots of
Dunhill scotch whisky into the mix. I was considering whether to go for
Chivas Regal or this one, and decided on this one, because it tastes
better than Chivas.

I also took the liberty of adding some whisky into myself at this
point. The recipe calls for 30 seconds of stirring, and I felt that
having a drink in my hand would make the task much more pleasurable. ;)
One does get sick of cheap alcohol, so this premium scotch is a very
welcome drink instead and makes the baking process much better. It goes
very well with clonazepam too, but don’t add that into the baking mix,
for Christ’s sake.

Thus, I stirred the mix for about 30 seconds (or until I was tired of stirring, didn’t know which came first, really).

Now, we realized that we need to find an appropriate receptacle for
our cake mix, so we searched for one. The candidates were: a small
circular cake tin, a long bread mould tin and a square cake tin. We
chose the last one and used butter to grease the inside and finely
powdered it with flour as per the cake mix instructions.

The cake mix, which now contains the original Devil’s food mix,
three large eggs, water, vegetable oil, and scotch whisky was processed
with one of them cake mixers for two minutes or so. The box said two
minutes anyway, we did not time ourselves, we just looked at the very
hypnotic swirls until we shook ourselves and realized that the cake mix
seems to be smooth.

I then proceeded to prepare the Hershey’s Kisses by unwrapping it
from the foil and pulling out those damned liners. I like to call this
“unkissing the kisses”.

The cake mix was poured into the cake tin…

and Hershey’s Kisses were dropped into the mix at random spots. I
used up the whole packet, there is bound to be one in every square inch
of the cake.

Finally, we realized that we have not pre-heated the oven and did
so. It should be noted that I did not want to do any calculations to
change Fahrenheit to Celsius so I let my girlfriend set the heat
settings to what “should be about right” for a cake. The cake mix is
finally inserted into the oven.

We waited…

and waited…

and I finally took the cake out of the oven with this nifty cake tin lifter when it looked right.

My girlfriend poked a hole in the middle with a toothpick and it came out moist, so back to the oven it was…

I present to you…the final product! We had waited for about 15
minutes and took the cake back out again. My gf then proceeded to poke several
holes across the cake while laughing hysterically. My
cake…sabotaged… :p Oh, by the way, the crack in the middle is
apparently the result of taking it out before it was fully done and
putting it back in again. The temperature differential shock tends to
make it go that way.

The movie clip shows me eating the cake with some nitrous oxide,
er…I mean, some whipped cream. It should be noted that whipped cream
uses nitrous oxide (N20) as a propellant:

However, if you’re expecting to get recreational hits of nitrous off
a whipped cream bottle, you’re going to be very disappointed. It’s only
a small canister, and the dispensing system will produce whipped cream
no matter now tenderly you manipulate the nozzle to produce nitrous
oxide. You’re not going to get anywhere near recreational doses off
this, and it’s not for the lack of trying. I did, and the best I could
do was get a minute amount into my lungs and my exertions expended the
nitrous canister of the whipped cream container…which made it produce
sludge instead of whipped cream. Oops…my bad. I didn’t realize it had
such a small amount of nitrous in the bulb. Stick with nitrous
canisters and crackers and leave the whipped cream container alone. ;)

Here’s a shot of a slice of The Devil’s Kiss with some…er, cream
sludge. It tasted pretty good actually, but it was a little too rich (I
think it was the oil). I’ll tell you something interesting…it seems
that some of the Hershey’s Kisses were preserved intact in the final
cake! The scotch did not shine through though, probably due to the
overpowering chocolate taste. Nevertheless, it was a great experiment
and it yielded a rather tasty cake. :)

I had wanted to name it The Devil’s Kiss with Angel’s Cum on it, but
I didn’t think that would be a very appealing name for a cake so I’ll
settle with The (Drunk) Devil’s Kiss (unofficial name) or Devil’s Food
Cake with Hershey’s Kisses and whipped cream, for a more orthodox name.
;)